The Cinema Society and Alice & Olivia present Gimme Shelter

Vanessa Hudgens takes on her most dramatic role yet.

The atmosphere prior to last night's screening of Gimme Shelter belied the film's dramatic tone as audience members including Tyra Banks, Orange is the New Black's Taryn Manning, and Broadway up-and-comer Condola Rashad took their seats. The film's writer and director, Ronald Krauss, engaged in a bit of banter with his cast as he took the stage for his introduction, telling star Vanessa Hudgens he was thinking about a sequel (to which she shouted, "STOP IT!" in mock terror from her seat) and Hudgens' on-screen mom Rosario Dawson that he's still scared of her. "She's fierce in this movie," he said of Dawson's turn as an abusive drug addict. But Krauss became emotional as he discussed the film's inspiration, Several Sources Shelter founder Kathy DiFiore (played magnificently by Dowd). "I have no words to describe her. I have a film that does a little bit," he said.

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The movie opens with 16-year-old Apple (Hudgens) running away from her manic mother (Dawson is nearly unrecognizable with rotted yellow teeth and clownish blue eye makeup) to the home of her estranged father (Brendan Fraser in a surpisingly moving role) and his wife (Stephanie Szostak). Upon learning of Apple's pregnancy, they try to force her to have an abortion, but she flees to the streets to save her baby. There she's rescued by a priest (James Earl Jones) and taken to DiFiore's home, which doubles as a shelter for pregnant homeless women. As she befriends the girls around her and learns what it means to be loved, Apple must also come to terms with her past as her parents vie to bring her—and her baby—back into their lives. After the emotional screening, the audience headed to Harlow to celebrate.